The ARRL delivered my 1500 band-point medallion yesterday, and it is now mounted on my DXCC Challenge Plaque. I had acquired the 1000 band-point plaque after about 3 years of DXing. It took almost 7 years to work the next 500 band-points during the bottom on Solar Cycle 24, and the beginning of 25.
Greyline propagation is always a plus. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I worked my 1st Australian station on 160m. Unfortunately the contact wasn’t complete. Since then I was mostly trying to work the higher frequency bands to complete my 1,500 DXCC Challenge band-points. With that complete I turned back to 160m.
As usual I’ve heard multiple Brazil, Argentinian, and other South American stations on 160m, but they never hear me. I did work Montenegro and am awaiting LotW confirmation. That gave me some hope.
This morning around local sunrise (1130UTC) I saw Japan and Australia coming in pretty strong. I worked both, and have received a LotW confirmation from VK3NX (thanks Charlie). I also worked Peter VK5PW, the station I had worked two weeks earlier, as well JE7GXQ in Japan.
So I now stand at 94 confirmed countries in LotW, with possible 2 more coming in, and one QSL card. This renewed my hope that I might be able to get DXCC on 160m by next spring.
The award for activating 50 parks came in this morning. It isn’t a big deal, some have activated over a thousand. But it looks like I’m in the top 10% (337 out of 3416 for 2021). It also represents a lot of fun and about 1000 QSOs.
Well the day started off on the wrong foot when I forgot to take into account the clock change and showed up for the 1300Z CWT an hour late! (I couldn’t figure out why the band was dead.) I recovered from that and worked 30 stations on 40m in a half hour at 1900z. That appears to be my 80th CWT for this year. While I started the CWTs too late to finish the year with a gold medallion, that will be a goal for next year. I’m still happy with silver for my 1st year.
Many thanks to everyone at CWops and all the CWT participants. Especially thanks to Joe Spencer, KK5NA, who was my CWA Advanced Class instructor, and Bruce Blain, K1BG, who spoke at my radio club (Newport County Radio Club) and introduced us to CWops and the CW Academy.
Not hard to do these days, given all the CWTs I’ve been participating in, as well as POTA activations.
The percentage of confirmed contacts has been dropping, primarily due to the large number of state-side QSOs I’ve had. Apparently, few of the POTA or CWT folks bother to upload their logs to LotW. Since ARRL membership is a requirement, perhaps that is an indication that fewer of those folks belong to the ARRL.
I started 2021 with 12,000 QSOs in the log, so this is 4,000 more since then. One of my goals for 2021 was to add 1,500 QSOs. Got that one by a mile.
Lynn and I had anticipated that today would be a stellar fall day in Rhode Island, and it certainly was. We left the house around 11 AM, and by noon (1700Z) I was on the air at the Blackstone River State Park (K-2869). With quiet RF conditions it was easy to complete 30+ contacts in 40 minutes.
About a half-hour later I was on the air at the World War II Veterans Memorial Park in Woonsocket. This is an inner city park, complete with RF noise coming from nearby buildings, cars, etc. The noise floor was about S7. Nevertheless, a dozen contacts were made (including 3 from one family: KN4VKW, KN4VKX, and KN4VKY).
RI is a very small state, about 45 miles from end to end. Sometimes we joke that the state is so small you have go to Massachusetts to make a U-turn. Such was the case today, as we traveled about 40 miles through MA, CT and back into RI to get to the Buck Hill Wildlife Management Area (K-7714), which was only about 10 miles away as the crow flies. That put me about an hour behind schedule, just getting there. Like almost all the Wildlife Management Areas in RI, it is about wildlife, not people, so no trails, no obvious places to park, etc. But the good news was it was far enough away that there was no RF noise. 20+ contacts were quickly added to the log.
With those three parks completed, that brings my total RI Activations up to 50, which was another goal for 2021. Now only two parks remain; Beach Pond (K-6980) on the border of RI and CT, as well as Block Island (K-0513), which requires an expensive ferry ride to access. I will leave these as goals for 2022.
Prior to 2012, I had only 7 QSLs from DXCC countries (USA, AK, HI, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain). I wasn’t a DXer, but I had volunteered for years at the W4 QSL Bureau. I got to see QSL cards from all over the world going into the the sorting bins of other hams. I wondered if I would ever get DXCC. Forty two years later, in 2012, after taking a decade off from ham radio (raising kids, working hard, etc), I started chasing DX. Despite having a modest station, by March of 2012, I had a mixed DXCC certificate in hand. Many of them were QRP and CW. After that, I had the bug!
Three years later, I had reached 1000 band-points and earned the first level of the DXCC Challenge award. Just in the nick of time, as Solar Cycle 24 was rapidly faltering. (Thankfully I had also completed 8BDXCC around this same time, so I was mostly looking for 160 meter contacts).
Over the next six years, my DXCC Challenge count slowly increased. While it took two months shy of seven years, today I finally obtained 1500 band-points. Those seven years covered the bottom of Cycle 24 and the beginning of Cycle 25, which made DX far more challenging.
My thanks to Mario YS1GMV, who happened to be #1500, and of course all those before him!
A shiny-new QRP Labs 4om QCX-mini joined the collection of QRP rigs today. My thanks to Jon, W8TY (Ohio), who did the heavy lifting for my first QSO using the mini. I’m still amazed at the performance of a transceiver that is about the size of a deck of cards.
I did some simple tests to see how things were working. Everything was done using a LiFePO4 battery with a voltage of about 13.1 volts.
I checked out the RX sensitivity, and had no issue hearing a 1 uV signal (S3). A 50 uV signal (S9) was very strong/loud. Not surprisingly, the mini has no AGC, so be careful with the volume control when tuning around, as the strongest signals can be painful if the volume is too high.
I was very impressed with the internal keyer, which did a fine job at 20 wpm.
It should be obvious from the photo below, that there is very little wireless about this hobby. I’ll also point out that the paddle, battery and antenna tuner weigh in at 11 times the weight of the QCX-mini and 6 times the volume.
I have another QCX-mini, for 20m, waiting to be built.
Solar Cycle 25 is well underway with Sunspot Numbers at values not seen in six years! (Above the prediction for this early in the cycle 25). I’ve been having fun on all the higher frequency bands recently, with 10/12/15 open at least part of the late morning and afternoon every day.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
I continue to try and reach my goal of 1500 band-points for the DXCC Challenge. A day ago, I was sitting at 1486. By today, I’m at 1495. I can’t remember a time that I’ve picked up so many confirmations in a day or two. With 14 more Qs waiting for confirmation including 7 from the excellent 3DA0RU DXpedition, it seems that 1500 might happen before the end of the year.
I’ve only heard Australian stations a couple of times on 160m, but they have never heard me before. This morning broke the curse, and I was able to work VK5PW on 160m via grey-line. Now I’m hoping that he uploads to LotW.
